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Robert Frost
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e’er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I held them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
I am finite as my picture frame
I sit full of shadows
and break my neck looking
over my shoulder
at a loss how we all come to be
in a new rogue world
The way the snow returns to the sky
is far more painstaking than the way it falls.
Near the end, it turns from ground to figure,
from canvas to paint. It scales the ladder
of its own self-effacement.
So the snow withdrew into a clef-shaped cleft
& waited for its cue. This winter could go
either way.
The witch hazel measured itself against an oak.
I want to be a tree, it sang, when I grow up –
A bird perch,
An insect metropolis,
A gallery of lichens above,
And below, a husband to fungi.
True, I am all these things already,
But not as a tree.
in the arms of the corporation
I found myself
a contract I am
resolved not to alter
they understand me
and all who feel only half made
Right at dusk, as always,
I overhear myself: a drone note
audible in the lull
between shifts of crickets.
Darkness rises from the ground
between the corn stalks,
which are anything but still.
I step deliberately, one season
on each foot. Today left a crust
of salt around my collar,
lifted now by a passing breath
of wings. I don’t look up.
Four quick cries & a pause,
then two more: Estiquirín.
The hoe handle digs
a furrow in my shoulder
who am I
to live in unity
denying all the others
we carried with us
the mask remembering
things acted years ago
in my sleep
All this vexing afternoon
with a child crying
at school—
I am he.
Kin to the seal,
I walk beyond the version
of the sea I am.
In the morning
he shouted at the fields
(the crooked fellow)
walked up and down
(the churchyard cock)
broke Barebone’s windows
and went home
(my dog-brother)
don’t be so eager to find yourself
the deer rolls her eye in panic
at your approach
birds take flight
the rabbit’s pelt quivers
consider the possibility
that they’re right about you
those whom we trust to predict earthquakes
stop trying to dot your i’s
broken columns
from a Greek temple
where no one now remembers
the name of the god
In my last dream before waking
I meet a version of myself
from an alternate universe.
We greet each other cautiously.
There’s a slight class difference:
while I flipped burgers at the diner
my alter-ego went to graduate school
& now teaches cultural studies
at the university. He takes me back
to his apartment, which he shares
with two housemates & a dozen cats.
I watch in wonder as
he gives a good-night kiss
to a woman black as coffee.
I gave up poetry years ago, he says.
He asks what I’ve done
With the cameras focused on me,
My voice suddenly alters,
As my lines come forth,
Possessing a new identity,
My hair unlike what it’s been,
My style completely different,
Unrecognizable to family and friends,
Feeling like an out-of-body experience,
When the cameras are turned off,
And I exit the set,
I can set aside my character,
And can again be myself,
As I travel home,
To see my wife and kids,
I suddenly feel naked,
Like something’s missing,